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Amazon SQS vs Apache Kafka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon SQS enhances performance and reliability, increasing productivity by reducing programming effort and labor costs, despite initial investment.
Sentiment score
6.6
Apache Kafka offers substantial returns, especially in high-value applications, with enhanced data buffering, cost savings, and ease of use.
Using Amazon SQS has led to increased productivity and reduced man-hour costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon SQS customer service satisfaction varies, influenced by purchased support level, with premium options offering improved experiences.
Sentiment score
5.9
Apache Kafka's support is community-driven, with varying user experiences and enhanced options available through paid subscriptions and consultants.
They meet their tasks effectively.
I want to receive good technical support, which I only need once a month or every six months, and the experience has been unsatisfactory.
There is plenty of community support available online.
The Apache community provides support for the open-source version.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon SQS excels in scalability and integration, though users note configuration needs and potential message duplicates.
Sentiment score
7.7
Apache Kafka is praised for its robust scalability, efficiently handling high data throughput, with some challenges in cluster management.
I can easily scale up or down with Amazon SQS without any issues.
Amazon SQS is highly scalable, automatically managing itself based on the load.
Customers have not faced issues with user growth or data streaming needs.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Users highly trust Amazon SQS for its stability, reliability, and performance, often preferring it over RabbitMQ and Kafka.
Sentiment score
7.6
Apache Kafka is stable and performs well with high data volumes, though some configurations may affect its reliability.
With Amazon SQS, such maintenance is not needed, making it more reliable and secure.
The stability of Amazon SQS is very good, as I find it to be very stable.
Partitioning helps us distribute all the messages that we receive between all partitions, which helps us to be stable.
Apache Kafka is stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon SQS users seek better documentation, integrations, security, pricing, UI, performance, message handling, and monitoring tools.
Enhancing Kafka involves user-friendly UI, improved monitoring, reduced ZooKeeper dependency, better documentation, flexibility, and integration with other platforms.
It would be beneficial if there was a provision to configure and retain messages for longer than a week.
The performance angle is critical, and while it works in milliseconds, the goal is to move towards microseconds.
We are always trying to find the best configs, which is a challenge.
Scaling up continues to be a challenge, though it is much easier now than it was in the beginning.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon SQS offers a cost-effective pay-as-you-use model, but high-scale usage can increase costs compared to alternatives.
Apache Kafka is free to use, but costs vary for managed services and enterprise solutions, potentially exceeding 100,000 euros annually.
On a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, I would rate the pricing as one.
The open-source version of Apache Kafka results in minimal costs, mainly linked to accessing documentation and limited support.
Its pricing is reasonable.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon SQS enables scalable, reliable messaging with easy AWS integration, supporting FIFO and standard queues for efficient processing.
Apache Kafka excels in scalability, real-time streaming, and flexibility, ideal for large data volumes and event-driven architectures.
If there's a failure in the system after consuming a message, SQS's settings ensure the message is not deleted until confirmation.
If we compare with other solutions such as RabbitMQ for messaging, Amazon SQS is easier to use and easier to create the queue.
Apache Kafka is particularly valuable for managing high levels of transactions.
Apache Kafka is effective when dealing with large volumes of data flowing at high speeds, requiring real-time processing.
The impact of Apache Kafka's scalability features on my organization and data processing capabilities depends on how many messages each company wants to receive.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon SQS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (3rd)
Apache Kafka
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Amazon SQS and Apache Kafka aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Amazon SQS is designed for Message Queue (MQ) Software and holds a mindshare of 7.8%, down 9.7% compared to last year.
Apache Kafka, on the other hand, focuses on Streaming Analytics, holds 3.7% mindshare, up 2.0% since last year.
Message Queue (MQ) Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon SQS7.8%
IBM MQ25.5%
ActiveMQ25.1%
Other41.6%
Message Queue (MQ) Software
Streaming Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Kafka3.7%
Apache Flink14.8%
Databricks12.5%
Other69.0%
Streaming Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

Hari Prakash Pokala - PeerSpot reviewer
Valuable AWS services enhance data analysis yet could benefit from flexible data streams
I am using multiple services such as AWS Lambda, S3, EC2, ECS, and the SNS SQS services, along with QuickSight reports and some of the VPC concepts.  We have an email notification system integrated with Spring Branch. Once a batch job completes, SNS and SQS trigger events, sending notification…
Snehasish Das - PeerSpot reviewer
Data streaming transforms real-time data movement with impressive scalability
I worked with Apache Kafka for customers in the financial industry and OTT platforms. They use Kafka particularly for data streaming. Companies offering movie and entertainment as a service, similar to Netflix, use Kafka Apache Kafka offers unique data streaming. It allows the use of data in…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise47
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon SQS?
The retention period for messages could be improved. Currently, messages are retained for four or seven days. It would be beneficial if there was a provision to configure and retain messages for lo...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SQS?
I primarily use Amazon SQS ( /products/amazon-sqs-reviews ) for asynchronous messaging. It is part of our distributed system design, where we use it for asynchronous communication by posting a mess...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
What do you like most about Apache Kafka?
Apache Kafka is an open-source solution that can be used for messaging or event processing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Kafka?
Its pricing is reasonable. It's not always about cost, but about meeting specific needs.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EMS, NASA, BMW, Capital One
Uber, Netflix, Activision, Spotify, Slack, Pinterest
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon SQS vs. Apache Kafka and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.